Father and son build a copy of the Boston field in Drain

Thursday

Apr 19, 2012 at 12:01 AM

DRAIN — Unlike in the movie “Field of Dreams,” no voice whispered to Jim Maciariello, “If you build it, he will come.”

But just as in the 1989 classic baseball movie starring Kevin Costner, the story of Maciariello’s homemade ballpark does come with similar storylines: Fathers and sons. Fenway Park. History. And a rural dreamer not afraid to think outside the batter’s box.

The Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park, which has a role in the movie, rose to life the same week that the Titanic sunk to its death.

Fenway’s first game was played 100 years ago Friday. For perspective on how long ago 1912 was, consider that President John F. Kennedy’s grandfather threw out the first pitch.

The park has endured two world wars, the Depression and proposals to replace it. It’s now the oldest venue of any professional sports team in America.

Only some of which explains why Maciariello, 58, and son, Ben, 31, decided to build a one-third-scale version of Fenway Park on pop’s 60 acres just west of this Douglas County town.

Jim Maciariello’s father grew up in Boston. Jim, a longtime Red Sox fan, has more than a little of that go-for-it zaniness of the movie’s corn-farming lead character, Ray Kinsella, played by Costner. And Ben is the Oregon governor of the Red Sox Nation fan club.

So, the two have the Sox thing going. But there are tens of thousands of Red Sox fans who root ardently for the team but don’t spend $7,000 building — and then grooming the field of — a miniature Fenway Park. (Though YouTube suggests the Maciariellos aren’t alone.)

“At first, it was just going to be an outfield fence for a Wiffle ball game at a Fourth of July picnic,” says Jim.

That was the summer of 2005.

Three weeks later, when the first Wiffle ball fluttered toward home plate on July 4, batters, indeed, had a fence to swing for.

But nurtured by the soggy Oregon winter that followed, father and son dreamed bigger.

“Dad, why not build a scaled-down Fenway?” Ben asked.

Jim didn’t need much convincing.

“Baseball,” he says, “is about kids and fun and remembering your favorite players. Baseball is timeless. And Fenway is the oldest park in America. So, we thought: ‘How cool would it be to have our family and friends trying to hit balls over the Green Monster?’”

They would build the famed, 37-foot-high wall in left field (a little over 12 feet in Drain), complete with Fenway’s trademark scoreboard.

Not only that, but the odd-shape “triangle” in the centerfield wall and “Pesky’s Pole” in right field. (The foul ball marker was named for ex-Portlander Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox player from the 1940s and ’50s who had a propensity for hitting home runs just inside the pole.)

“We wanted it to look authentic,” says Jim, president of Riverbend Engineering Inc., a consulting firm he operates out of his home, which sits a quarter-mile from the field.

For most of June 2006, he and Ben worked 12 hours a day and made more runs to Jerry’s Home Improvement than the Red Sox scored, per game, en route to winning the 2004 World Series.

They used oriented strandboard — similar to plywood — for the stadium wall, anchoring it with 4-by-4s and strengthening it with angled 2-by-4s.

Beyond that, they enclosed the entire park with a 3-foot fence, and put in a backstop and dugouts, all done in Fenway-green paint.

That done, they rototilled the field, smoothed it out, planted grass, carved out base paths in dirt and, of course, added the final touch: chalked lines. No grandstands — yet.

YOU SEE it through the trees for the first time and it thrills you the way seeing a whale thrills you. In giant letters, on the back of the Green Monster: “Fenway West.”

The field sits on a shelf among rolling hills and trees, far more intriguing than intruding, its low scale and green paint working well with the surroundings.

Fenway West is 121 feet to right and 103 to left. Jim and Ben placed left field due east of home plate to exploit winds out of the west; better, of course, for righties to poke homers.

Who plays Wiffle ball here?

Family. Friends. A few high school and American Legion baseball teams looking for some fun.

“The kids loved the history and the significance of all the detail,” says North Douglas High baseball coach Jeff Davis, whose team played there last spring.

But, no, unlike in “Field of Dreams,” the cars have never lined up bumper-to-bumper on Highway 38.

And, no, in relation to the movie’s “if you build it, he will come” line — often misquoted as “they” will come — Jim’s father has never walked out of the Douglas firs for a game of catch with his son at Fenway West.

But recently, as Jim threw pitches to his son, Ben, in the ballpark the two of them built, you were reminded of a truth that’s lasted like Fenway itself:

Baseball is, indeed, timeless. And, in its innocence, still connects people to life’s deeper things.

Follow @bob_welch on Twitter. Or reach him at 541-338-2354 or bob.welch@registerguard.com.

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